Indy Catholic schools may go charter

Inner-city elementaries need financial assist.

Inner-city elementaries need financial assist.

December 12, 2009

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Catholic Church officials have applied to convert two inner-city Indianapolis elementary schools into taxpayer-supported charter schools, which would mean giving up their religious identities and education classes. The Archdiocese of Indianapolis has subsidized St. Andrew & St. Rita Catholic Academy and St. Anthony School for years because low-income families sending children to the schools couldn't afford much tuition, church officials said. A plan submitted to the city this week calls for a nonprofit organization to run the schools, which could receive more than $1 million in state funding in the first year. If city officials agreed, the charter schools would open next fall. The nonprofit organization formed by the archdiocese to run the charter schools would have to ensure they had have a secular curriculum. "We will always be about values-based education," Connie Zittnan, the current director of the schools, told The Indianapolis Star. "What we will not be able to do is to bring those values with a direct discussion of God." Church officials intend to offer before- and after-school religious education programs to students on a voluntary basis. But crucifixes and religious statues will have to be removed from classrooms and hallways or be covered up. This is the first time a religious organization in Indianapolis has sought to form charter schools, which are public schools not run by the local school district, said Karega Rausch, director of the city's charter school program. Catholic church leaders in New York, Miami and Washington have converted parish schools into charter schools, but those were operated by secular organizations, she said. City and church officials have had "a mutual conversation" about the charter school idea in recent months, Rausch said. Archdiocese spokesman Greg Otolski said it costs $7,000 a year to educate a student at the inner-city schools, but some low-income families can afford to pay no more than $300 a year. "The money was never going to balance out to keep these schools operating," Otolski said.